


Why People Tend to Hate Kent Parson

by aunnawhite



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: This is an attempted and aborted analysis, coming out is not an end goal, i get too defensive of kent not sorry, i got too upset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 12:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16854238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunnawhite/pseuds/aunnawhite
Summary: I tried to write out my ideas of why Kent is controversial but I got mad and started scrolling on Tumblr's Kent tag and got more upset, so here we are. It's half done, not great, but I'm posting it anyway.





	Why People Tend to Hate Kent Parson

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I love Kent, and I hate Bitty. If you wanna discuss something in the comments, it's cool, but do not be vitriolic and don't state outright that Kent is a bad person. Jack I'm neutral on. Just so we're clear on my biases before you read. Got bored of being too confrontational, so I removed the jack and Eric tags, but they were there, just so you know you weren't imagining things.

This will be an analysis of why people who read Ngozi Ukazu’s webcomic OMG Check, Please! Tend to come into the surrounding fan culture with a knee-jerk hatred for Kent Parson. This analysis will be focused on the following backgrounds that people have that majorly color their perception of Kent Parson, whether positive or negative; those who want the story to be simple and upbeat; people who are straight; lesbian or bi women; LGBT people, in general, both for and against Kent; readers with personal experiences of struggles that Jack has faced; readers who who share a similar background to Kent. The overlap between these categories create the more nuanced feelings that readers have in reality, but the purpose of this reflection is to see the ethos and biases readers start out with or develop, depending on the category.

I with be speaking from my perspective and biases of and towards the groups, so I will use the first person pronoun I, as you shall see.I am attempting to state my biases and how they lead to certain impressions, and whether I can objectively judge the particulars and my personal feelings. I will end this with my intersectional, in terms of the prior groups I have laid out, opinion of Kent Parson and other Check, Please! content.

I have observed that people, when first discovering the webcomic, henceforth referred to as Check, Please!, fall into the trap of wanting happy representation of the LGBT community. While I can understand this impulse, as detailed in my personal section below, my understanding is that it is a lazy choice. Readers who are younger also can fall into this thought pattern, or those who are defending it from criticism, whether justified or not, though I have seen it deployed only at valid criticism, since I have not searched out the homophobic-tendencies leaning criticisms. Whether it is worthwhile to engage with trolls is another conversation that I do not attempt to enter here, though my bias towards not is showing. However, I can empathize with this category, as most can since most readers find the comic from recommendations based on the idea that the comic is supposed to be fluff. Whether it is intended to, and whether that matters, is yet another relevant conversation that I am not entering. The problems with this category is that people are emotionally attached in a way that is not conducive to analysis or to seeing the work’s flaws. And the work has many flaws that all seem to center on discussions around Kent Parson. This mindset has a knee-jerk hatred for a compassionate understanding of Kent Parson. The webcomic is a teddy bear and they are the toddler who screams at its departure, even for a wash. 

As the author is a straight, black, Yale-educated, Nigerian, (first-gen?) (Canadian?) woman, Ukazu has an interesting perspective that is not best suited to this type of story. Most women, however, fall into fascinations with male-dominated institutions as Ukazu was, which she cites as an inspiration for the webcomic. Understandable, but not a justification. At times, and with certain not-PG extras she sells, Ukazu definitely has that fetishizing gay men by straight women thing down. Though many of the fans do as well. Straight fans act paternally/motherly towards the characters, which makes them hostile to criticism and as I stated before, criticism usually involves Kent Parson. As well as Kent Parson being set up as one of the only antagonists of a happy-with-no-depth-if-you-don’t-want-it story-if-you-can-even-call-it-that, he was destined to not be well-liked by straight people who always seem to desire a pass to hate on LGBT people, no matter how thin the veneer between their hate and the excuse. Sorry, I’m sure you can make a case for there being good straight people out there, but that falls flat here in 2018/almost 2019 and I’m not interested. And before i get too angry, I’m going to cut off this section. I know I’m missing a lot of insightful analysis, feel free to discuss.

Lesbian or bi women, have the gender roles of straight women in common with straight women as I briefly mentioned above, but also they are erased by those roles.. I, in full disclosure, identify as a woman-aligned lesbian, but let’s not get into gender theory right now. Lesbian/bi women are distinctly othered by society more than any other mashup between gender and attraction. We tend to have this fascination with men that was forced on us by society, but not being men or attracted to them makes it a bit of a mess. Pardon the departure from the prior academic tone. I personally feel like gay men are siblings to lesbians in particular, like straight people of the same gender are, but without all the hostility that arises with that scenario and with the different genders. So we are like, “Oh, chill,” with media that caters to the other. And since men are so focused on, it tends to skew one way. Lesbian women don’t fetishize like straight/bi women can, so even in this category there are departures. But anyway, in regards to Kent Parson, lesbian/bi women tend to be more in favor of him than the general population, though it is not 50/50. There is less empathizing with Eric Bittle that straight/bi women and gay men do, and it scales from straight women to bi to lesbians. As a lesbian, I feel the least attached to Eric Bittle, and that tendency to be less biased allows people in this category to consider Kent Parson less through Eric’s eyes. Which is an achievement, since he is both the P.O.V. and protagonist of the webcomic. Yet another conversation I don’t want to have here.

LGBT people can be against Kent Parson with ease, due to Eric Bittle’s perspective as mentioned before, the community around the webcomic already coloring their perception of Eric, and the narrative choice for Kent to only appear half-way through the third of four “years”. They can see themselves in Eric or relate to him in general. Notwithstanding the fact that Eric is a caricature of the effeminate gay man from the eyes of a straight woman, but that’s none of my business. Maybe they just want the main relationship to be happy and without conflict, despite that being against the whole idea of a story arc. And maybe it’s internalized homophobia. Or maybe they demonize Kent for not being as brave as Jack, or hating the closeted character who faces extreme pressure in his occupation to stay closeted, in a way that Eric and Jack can only dream of. Once again, none of my business. Sorry for this section as well, it doesn’t read well, but it’s hard to tap down all your convictions to remember how you used to think. 

As I hinted at before, there is so much that Kent contributes as a foil for both Bitty and Jack, and if you consider that foils aren’t always the worse version of a character archetype, then it’s easier to see how Kent is actually a more human character than some of the other two-dimensional main characters aka Eric Bittle. Not sorry. Kent Parson definitely shows that Jack has a type, which totally makes Eric and those who empathize with him scared of the threat that he poses to the relationship between Jack and Eric, whether real or imagined. Whether or not Kent is the biggest threat, ignoring power imbalances, personality, backgrounds in general. Quick disclaimer, though I do find Eric grating and I harbour resentment for Jack, I find it a lot harder to let go of my personal distaste for Eric Bittle. More on that in the personal section. Being LGBT and not automatically hating Kent shows those readers how ugly the community is towards Kent, how little compassion they have for him, despite arguably Kent having a worse situation than Jack regarding the NHL. I can’t say it better than a certain fic that I see as better than canon even thought the author sticks to canon, aka After Me, and a lot of my opinions have been shaped by it. Consider this whole thing a paraphrased citation of that work and a tumblr blog than I cannot recall the username of since I deleted my own blog.


End file.
